e look out for prodigies, and were greatly
alarmed by them, since they had no certain knowledge of the number and
nature of their enemies, and the means they had invented for protecting
themselves from them or of overcoming them too often proved inefficient.
In the eyes of these barbarians, the Chaldeans seemed to be possessed of
the very powers which they themselves lacked. The magicians of Chaldaea
had forced the demons to obey them and to unmask themselves before them;
they read with ease in the heavens the present and future of men and
nations; they interpreted the will of the immortals in its smallest
manifestations, and with them this faculty was not a limited and
ephemeral power, quickly exhausted by use: the rites and formulas known
to them enabled them to exercise it freely at all times, in all places,
alike upon the most exalted of the gods and the most dreaded of mortals,
without its ever becoming weakened.

[Illustration:352.jpg A CHALDAEAN AMULET.]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Loftus. The
original is in the British Museum.

A race so endowed with wisdom was, indeed, destined to triumph over
its neighbours, and the latter would have no chance of resisting such
a nation unless they borrowed from it its manners, customs, industry,
writing, and all the arts and sciences which had brought about their
superiority. Chaldaeann civilization spread into Elam and took possession
of the inhabitants of the shores of the Persian Gulf, and then, since
its course was impeded on the south by the sea, on the west by the
desert, and on the east by the mountains, it turned in the direction of
the great northern plains and proceeded up the two rivers, beside whose
lower waters it had been cradled. It was at this very time that the
Pharaohs of the XIIIth dynasty had just completed the conquest of
Nubia. Greater Egypt, made what she was by the efforts of twenty
generations, had become an African power. The sea formed her northern
boundary, the desert and the mountains enclosed her on all sides, and
the Nile appeared the only natural outlet into a new world: she followed
it indefatigably from one cataract to another, colonizing as she passed
all the lands fertilized by its waters. Every step which she made in
this direction increased the distance between her capitals and the
Mediterranean, and brought her armies further south. Asia would have
practically ceased to exist, as far as Egypt was concerned, had